Brown vows to wipe out innumeracy

The Prime Minister-in-waiting said it was "unacceptable" that 150,000 children were not numerate before starting secondary school, promising one-to-one tuition for those left behind.

And he said 14 to 16-year-olds in danger of dropping out of education would be personally mentored alongside work-related training to boost their skills levels.

Speaking to business leaders at the CBI's annual dinner on the fifth day of his leadership campaign, Mr Brown also pledged to "never take any risks with inflation or with the stability of the economy", as he said the challenges of globalisation must be met with "world class" education, skills and innovation.

Mr Brown said that Britain had "moved from below average to above average" in education over the last 10 years.

He continued: "We have made big progress on literacy and numeracy. But as you will tell me we still have further to go - it is unacceptable that we still have 150,000 children leaving primary school who aren't numerate."

His Every Child Counts scheme would give children struggling with maths at primary school one-to-one tuition, helping 300,000 youngsters by 2010.

But he said it was also important to have strong vocational skills, which he described as "something that quite frankly has been our Achilles heel and held us back for too long".

Many youngsters were benefiting from apprenticeships now and the Government was on course to deliver its commitment of 500,000 apprentices by 2020, he said.

"Looking to the future I believe we can offer not just more but higher quality practical and work-related learning that prevents young people falling through the net," he added.